When to quit fixing issues? Difficult work with the inner CRM workflow

$$\huge\substack{ \color{#006ab4} \fcolorbox {white} {white}{\textsf{\color{#006ab4}{CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE\ }}} \frac{\hspace{168px}}{}\\[-0.9em] }$$ Information sharing: who, when, how?

The main challenges in a project of this scale were managing intersecting paths, balancing technological and usability standards while coordinating with the HR team, and addressing legal requirements, all of which are critical to the absence management process. Stakeholders were spread across different company parts, with varying goals and perspectives.

Our priority was establishing a transparent workflow system, planning clear communication on progress and issues, and defining who held final decision-making authority for each area. It took a few workshops to establish a sound system and build a base for further work.

I especially recommend the last exercise: to create a clear map of all stakeholders and persons of interest. I often put them into a matrix like this one:

Based on that, we created a backlog with stages, pre-planned meetings and reporting paths.

Goal: Find the main problems with the existing system and gather feedback about users’ expectations
Methodology: User interviews combined with active testing observation, UX Audit, and data analysis

Before we started user interviews, we also gathered information from those who helped them. We gathered all available data during the research phase, like help centre traffic or support ticket analysis. In the beginning, having a list of queries and topics from the help centre was an inspiration to check the absence management system as a first focus.

When we conducted user interviews and tests, we discovered a few patterns that showed the problem was more profound than simple UX.

At this point, we present the first version of the report to discuss our insights with stakeholders.

As a next step, we performed a detailed UX Audit on this part of the system and compared it with other research to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Using all the gathered data and user insights, we decided to prototype changes to simplify flows and make the system more intuitive. We conducted extensive benchmarking research to support our proposal to stakeholders, analyzing top-rated absence management systems like BambooHR, Timetastic, and Qlearsite to identify best practices and market standards for usability, compliance, and efficiency. Additionally, we compared industry benchmarks for absence rates and costs to demonstrate the value of adopting modernized systems.

The last thing left was cross-checking our recommendation with the technical team and developers.

Our report stated that replacing the system with a new one would be a more efficient way to achieve our goals, despite an apparent cost of this change.

Presenting such a recommendation in a vast and complex organization is undeniably challenging. Years of growth often result in a tangled network of systems and dependencies that are costly to replace and require significant integration effort. Moreover, implementing global changes typically demands a substantial upfront investment, which is why

This was partly the case with our project. Migrating documents, training users, integrating new processes into existing systems, updating the intranet, and creating new help and support structures were all daunting tasks. I fully understood the consequences of replacing the old system, but no viable alternative existed. Continuing with the current tool would only delay the inevitable, eventually leading to a critical point where the system would become so unusable that urgent, unplanned changes would be required, leaving no room for gradual adaptation or step-by-step migration. Acting now was the only way to avoid a future crisis.

In hindsight, a deeper technological survey should have been conducted in the early stages of the project. The person responsible for development and implementing changes was involved in the process, but a deeper analysis of the existing technology was missing. While we anticipated the system would be old and challenging to modernise, we did not foresee the extent of the obstacles. It wasn’t until the cost evaluation that we fully understood how outdated the system was. Had we known this at the start of the project, we likely would have approached the research and recommendations differently, engaging additional stakeholders and setting a new direction for the work. This would have included identifying a new system's needs and basic requirements and planning for its seamless implementation, potentially with a long-term roadmap to manage the transition effectively.

The company had detailed insights into the goals and expectations of teachers and school principals, but students remained something of a mystery when it came to understanding the motivations behind their purchasing decisions